Wednesday, 25 August 2010

How many lives do you lead?

As a cat I am supposed to have nine lives - I think. I may have this wrong. If I do have nine lives are they consecutive or parallel? If they are consecutive I feel as if I have used up eight of them already. Life is going to be much too short. If they are parallel I seem to have lost some along the way. Where can I find them and what should I be using them for?There are my two 'working' lives - looking after my father and looking after the communication needs of other people. There is my writing life - does that include the blog or is that another life?There is my knitting life - that seems a very small life at present. It struggles - much as I like the challenge of keeping it alive. There is my almost non-existent social life. Five lives. I must have four more somewhere.It all sounds rather silly put like that but my life seems to have been rather out of kilter recently. The cat hairs have not been as evenly spread as they should be. I am not aiming for a comfortable existence - that would be asking too much and would almost certainly be very dull. I think I would like a little more time to untangle the cat hairs and get them in order but that will not solve all the problems.I really need to be in three places at once on Friday. I need to be at a funeral. That is the first priority. I need to greet my two American friends who are coming to stay until Tuesday. They have been very understanding about the funeral and tell me 'family' comes first. They are going to be good guests who go off and entertain themselves - for which I am most grateful although I feel guilty about not being there to meet them. I promised to do something for someone else and I have to break that promise - but I think I can make it up to them. I hope so. I do not like breaking promises.Yes, I will get a more balanced life back...or rather nine lives. Right now I know I am just lucky to have them.

Dear cat, may all your lives come back to you enriched by their travels... and I know how it feels, though not being a cat, I go over to the Bilbo Baggins feeling of being 'butter scraped over too much bread'. We do go through these difficult patches, but hopefully to emerge again...!